Field of the Disclosure
This Application relates to devices and methods relating to enhanced flow processing, and other matters.
For example, this Application can include information relating to enhanced flow processing in a distributed network monitoring environment.
Other and further possibilities are described herein.
Related Art
One problem that has arisen, particularly in the field of network monitoring, is that some network devices will provide status data more quickly, and some more slowly. This can have the effect that, when status data arrives at a network monitoring device, some of the data might be out of order. Some of the data might be so delayed as to be too late to consider when presenting a status of the network to an operator or user. One possibility is to maintain a buffer, and to maintain incoming status data in that buffer, ordering the status data so that when the status data is extracted from the buffer, the status data information will be in order. While this can allow status data to arrive out of order and still be properly considered as if it arrived in-order, it is subject to at least some drawbacks.                One drawback is that if the incoming status data is very late, either the buffer would have to be very large, or the status data would eventually have to be removed from the buffer, with the effect that the status data would be removed from consideration. This would have the consequent effect that the network monitoring device's report on the status of the network would be less faithful to reality, and if sufficiently less faithful to reality, not as valuable to the operator or user.        One drawback is that if there is a large amount of network traffic to consider, the network monitoring device would not have the resources to process all of the available status data within a reasonable amount of time, with the effect that some of the status data, at least, would not be considered within a reasonable time. This would have the consequent effect that the network monitoring device would have a choice between either delaying reports to the operator or user, possibly to the point where that status data would not be as valuable.        
The network monitoring device thus effectively has a choice between providing information that is not as accurate as possible, or providing information that is not as useful as possible.
This can present multiple problems for monitoring devices in the distributed network monitoring environment.
Some Drawbacks of the Known Art
Each of these issues, either alone or in combination with others, at some times, or in some conditions, can cause one or more problems in aspects of effective and efficient reporting of status data to operators or users, particularly when it is desired that the status data is both as accurate and useful as possible, and particularly in a distributed network monitoring environment.